Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, TO A NIGHTINGALE HEARD UPON A HILLTOP BEFORE DAWN, by HERBERT TRENCH


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Classic and Contemporary Poetry

TO A NIGHTINGALE HEARD UPON A HILLTOP BEFORE DAWN, by                     Poet's Biography
First Line: Yes, nightingale, I lie awake
Last Line: Floats out to all the land!
Subject(s): Birds; Nightingales


YES, Nightingale, I lie awake
And wondering hear thee sing
Over the deep world from thy brake
While every other thing
Sleepeth -- the deep world like a lake
Stirred round thee, ring on ring!

More than the chanters of the light
Thy passion men confounds
Because like ours 'tis born in sight
Of that which hath no bounds:
How the dark-streaming infinite
Wells in those golden sounds!

Some traveller once in Himalay
Chanced on a tribe so lone,
So dungeoned from the world away,
They deemed it all their own,
And any human race but they
Incredible, unknown.

But up, up where the snowy crest
Of Elburz mounts the blue
And Caucasus sinks east and west
Precipitous, some few
Clansmen are found, high on its breast
Where half the earth's in view;

And these by that great prospect thrilled
Perhaps, in joy or fear,
Poor hunters wild and rudely skilled,
Have raised an altar there
"To the God Unknown"; and this they build
Of horns of goat and deer.

Like thine their dark and lofty song
Where shining gulfs expand
Beyond the Caspian -- Death, Time, Wrong
That few can understand --
Is launched, and low and clear and strong
Floats out to all the land!





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